Positive Steps For Prematurity, the Irish Chapter of EFCNI's Benchmarking Report was launched on Nov 17th 2011 in the Royal College of Physicians Kildare Street. The report was carried out by EFCNI in collaboration with Irish Premature Babies and the Neo-Natal Sub Group of The Faculty of Paediatrics of The Royal College of Physicians. The study was sponsored by Abbott Laboratories Limited.

The report provides a comparative analysis of the prevelance and impact of prematurity in Ireland vis-a-vis 13 other European states, a review of policy and practices, evidence of good practice and proposed recommendations at European and National level.

The launch was attended by politicians, medical professionals, policy makers and stakeholders and was very well received. The key recommendations from the report are:

1.Develop and implement a targeted public policy on neonatal health with the active engagement of healthcare professionals and parents.

2. Increase general awareness of prematurity from a health, social and economic perspective.

3.Develop and implement a National Prevention and Screening Programme for high risk pregnancies.

4. Take active measures to improve the neonatal workforce education and neonatal staffing in order to meet international standards.

5. Extend the current Neonatal Transport Programme to a 24 hour service to ensure adequate coverage and patient access to emergency and quality care as needed.

Kangaroo mother care is a method of care of preterm infants. The method involves infants being carried, usually the mother or father, with skin-to-skin contact. This guide is intended for health professionals responsible for the care of low-birth-weight and preterm infants. Designed to be adapted to local conditions, it provides guidance on how to organize services at the referral level and on what is needed to provide effective kangaroo mother care. The guide includes practical advice on when and how the kangaroo-mother-care method can best be applied.

One of our aims is to look at areas that we know parents need some extra support in such as lactational assistance. We have had numerous queries from parents looking for information or help with expressing or breastfeeding. Although we are not a breastfeeding organisation and we would support a parent’s choice of feeding regardless of what it was, we know that many parents run into problems with expressing or breastfeeding and we want to try help in any way we can.

As parents who have all had premature babies, we know how traumatic and how stressful it is for parents and families when their baby arrives prematurely. Similarly, we fully understand how difficult it can be for mothers who are trying to express milk or breastfeed under such challenging and tiring circumstances.

The aim of this survey is to look at the support, information, and understanding we get as parents when it comes to expressing or breastfeeding our babies. We want to try make sure every parent whether your express or breastfeed for one day, one week, one month whatever, has easy access to help that might make a difference to you.

By completing this survey we can look at providing evidence to the government and other agencies to highlight that both parents and the NICU’s/ SCBU’s need more funding and support in relation to the lactation services that are available to parents of premature or ill babies in Ireland.

Thank you so much for taking the time to complete this survey, it should take about 5 minutes. If you have had more than one premature birth, we would really appreciate, if you could take the survey for each baby.